But Amber Rudd left no doubt that the ban could be extended to more countries when she was questioned on the subject by the BBC's Andrew Marr.

Marr suggested that to a lot of people it seemed "strange" that the ban only applied to certain countries, when the method for making laptop bombs could be shared with extremists anywhere in the world.

Asked whether there should eventually be a total ban on taking laptops in hand luggage, Ms Rudd said: "It's difficult to see how far this will go, whether we may at some stage arrive at that place."

She added: "At the moment the Government has made the decision on where to have that ban in place based on the intelligence we have received."

The ban currently prevents passengers having laptops, iPads, Kindles and other gadgets larger than a mobile phone in their hand luggage if they are travelling from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia.

Questions had already been asked about why the UK did not also extend the ban to Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, which are on a US list of banned countries drawn from similar intelligence.

Last year the Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab smuggled a bomb concealed in a laptop on board a flight out of Mogadishu, which punched a large hole in the side of the aircraft.

Luckily, on that occasion the terrorist detonated his device soon after take-off, and he was the only person killed as the pilot was able to land the aircraft safely. If he had waited until it was at a higher altitude the results could have been catastrophic.